Howard Hawks' 43 previous films include His Girl Friday, Scarface, Only Angels Have Wings, Red River, Rio Bravo and half a dozen other examples of American film making at its best and most energetic. Hawks' 44th film, Rio Lobo, does not belong on that list. There are a few good scenes—an intricately executed train wreck, for example—but the movie is notably slack where it should be zestful. It is mostly a replay of familiar fare: John Wayne flirts with the girls, keeps the hot-blooded younger fellers in their place, and finally goes up against the bad guys in the last reel.
As usual in Hawks pictures, Wayne remains the stoic straight man, the butt of some good-natured gags, who nevertheless comes through whenever it is time for gunplay. He seems as natural and right in his role as a well-worn saddle, even though he wears a Vietnamese montagnard bracelet and a Western belt buckle engraved with a D while he plays a character named Cord McNally in a film set at the end of the Civil War.
The rest of the Duke's duds have become as ritualized as a knight's regalia. His stetsons and handmade boots, his chino pants and leather vests, his intricate, yoked-front shirts have been part of his standard wardrobe for years. He has been using the same gun belt for several decades, and the same chaps—a gift from an old western actor—for close to half a century. The "D" on the buckle stands for Dunson, the Wayne character in Red River. A gift from Hawks, it carries his initials in one corner. Wayne also wears a red-white-and-blue kerchief given to him by John Ford when they made Stagecoach. "It's pretty worn now, but I usually manage to get it into every picture," he says.
The costume, much like Wayne's own character, varies only subtly from film to film. The Duke knows by instinct what audiences accept without question: whatever he may be called in the script, he is always unmistakably John Wayne. And who would have it any other way?
Jay Cocks